John Easton was a political leader in the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, devoting decades to public service before eventually becoming governor of the colony.
15 Facts About John Easton
1.
2.
The younger John Easton remained in Newport the remainder of his life, where he became involved in civil affairs before the age of 30.
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Ultimately serving more than four decades in the public service of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, John Easton began as an Attorney General for the island towns of Portsmouth and Newport, soon fulfilling the same role for the entire colony.
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The son of the Quaker governor, Nicholas John Easton, the younger John Easton was a lifelong Quaker, and following his death in 1705 was buried in the Coddington Cemetery in Newport where his father and several other Quaker governors are interred.
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Once in New England, the small John Easton family settled first in Ipswich, and then later in Newbury, both in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
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John Easton then went to Winnecunnet, later Hampton, New Hampshire, but was ousted from there as well, and by the end of 1638 he was at Portsmouth on Aquidneck Island in the Narragansett Bay with other followers of Anne Hutchinson.
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In 1653, while less than 30 years old, John Easton began a career of public service that would span more than four decades.
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John Easton continued to serve in multiple capacities, and in 1665 was a Deputy, and the following year served for his first of 18 terms as an Assistant.
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In 1674, John Easton was elected deputy governor of the colony, serving under William Coddington.
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John Easton served for two one-year terms in this office, being replaced in 1676 during King Philip's War with the militarily experienced John Cranston.
11.
The period of time from 1676 to 1681 was one of the few periods when John Easton did not serve in a public capacity.
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John Easton held the governorship for a period of five years, during which period, England and her allies were engaged in the Nine Years War with France, and the New England colonists were left to deal with this war in North America, known as King William's War.
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John Easton was buried in the Coddington Cemetery on Farewell Street in Newport where several other Quaker governors of the colony are interred.
14.
John Easton was the last of the Rhode Island colonial governors who came out of the exile of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, his father having been expelled from that colony as a follower of Anne Hutchinson.
15.
In 1661, John Easton married Mehitable Gaunt, the daughter of Peter and Lydia Gaunt from nearby Plymouth Colony.